Front Cover: The Nizami Literature Museum
in Baku with three of the six statues which are dedicated to
literary giants. From left to right, Poet Vagif (18th century),
playwright Akhunzade (middle and late 19th century) and poetess
Natavan (mid 19th century). Photo: Oleg Litvin.

Back Cover: The Children's
Jujalarim center
performing in the narrow lanes of the old Inner City (Ichari
Shahar) in Baku, Azerbaijan's capital. Photo courtesy of BP and
Statoil Alliance.

During the Soviet period,
poets and writers were limited in what they could publish. Now
with independence, there are other restrictions, such as economic
restraints, major shift in language, transition
to a new alphabet, and
changes in readers' interests.

Nevertheless, Azerbaijanis are finding a new voice and a new
criteria for evaluating and writing literature. Several poems
and short stories are published here in English for the first
time. Read about the struggles of getting published during the
Soviet period in "New
Literary Voices."